Articles from March 1999

I swear, trying to get this updated and ready to go is killin’ me. 😉 No, in all seriousness, a few things that need to be noted:

I’ve been a fan of the popular comic User Friendly for a long time now. Last week, I started hanging out on the #UserFriendly on Undernet. These guys are great! I’ve been on IRC for nearly five years and never have I ever felt more welcome. But there are problems afoot in UFie-land. Please click on the banner on the bottom (the one with the cute little DustPuppy) and read more.

I was voted “Geek of the Week: For 3.21.99”. I was so stoked when I got the email. You see, I NEVER WIN ANYTHING! 🙂 Okay, okay, it took me a week (and then some!) to mention this. 🙂 However, since they linked my page, I’m linking theirs. But it just mad my day 🙂

New pictures:
*much* shorter hair. (It’s now orange 😉 new glasses (which I love) and I still need a damn nose and cheek job.

AND IF YOU THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH PINCHING MY CHEEKS! You are sooo wrong.

and in other news
Monday (3.29.99) has got to be the worse day of my life. It started out with me first getting to work and finding out my machine had been rebooted during the weekend (a big no no) and not fully powered up. See, I run server connectivity software called WhatsUpGold that checks the servers to verify they are functioning properly. When one server is not responding, an alpha numeric page is sent over a modem to the attending sysadmin. I sent an email out to the sysadmin mailing list and told them my machine was down and I was planning on fixing it. A few hours later, one of the sysadmins comes running down stairs yelling and screamin at me about why isn’t my machine up. I patiently explained that I had emailed (as I should) and he kinda went “Oh.” and left. Turns out the st00pid mail server didn’t take it cos the address I emailed from wasn’t on the dist list.

Later on, i find out that my motherboard is fried. The only other matching motherboards are also fried (didn’t know this till I had rebuilt the machine). So I stole a machine from someone who had left the company. I swapped harddrives and everything worked out ok.for a moment.Other things happened in the day. One of the NT sysadmins didn’t like my “attitude” and threatened to tell my boss (whose used to hearing this by now) however, my saving grace is that I’ve been sweet as pie since my last talk with my boss (heh) so he (the NT sysadmin) couldn’t really fault me. One of the other sysadmins tried to get me to apologize. I was like “Funk that!” I’m not apologizing for some moron’s ego. I can barely apologize for my own!

To top that off, I got two parking tickets. And when I came home after work (after contemplating about buying beer *gasp*), I was making pasta when I had realized we had NO SAUCE! argh! And to make it even worse, none of my slobby roommates took the garbage out. *pout*

braggarts
and today on #UF a certain nick (who won’t be named) came in claiming that they had hand ENTERED the h_key reg items in the registry on winders98, while drunk, at a party. To boot this person claimed that they had done this on an old Toshiba lap top with a 200MB drive, which had winders3.x->95->98 all installed on top of each other. This person just ticked me off so bad. A lot of people disagreed with this story. Supposedly, this person also claims a lot of stuff — and supposedly walks the walk, but they are a braggart. Someone in the channel would request something (hardware) and this person would “brag” they had the latest and greatest, would be willing to give it to ’em, but gee! it was broken/out of the shop/they live too far away for mail. I mean, c’mon here.

life
I had gotten an email, from my friend Skott the other day asking me something like: “Why is someone with such a natural talent for words and communication interested in installing computer networks with myself in the middle of nowhere?”

As many of my faithful readers know, this is the one quandary I’ve been having for awhile. I still haven’t made any concrete decisions about my life. I keep finding myself pulled in a thousand different places. I need to be making decisions, and I have been doing nothing but IRC’ing and playing spades my life away.

I miss everyone. 🙁

Come find me on IRC when you get the chance.

and more life
I completely realize that this issue isn’t personal or maybe not even that exciting. However, the masses are calling for it and whom am I to complain? It’s all part of the “LISA-PLAN-TO-TAKE-OVER-THE-WORLD!”

today i was sitting on BART, scribbling in my diary when i had noticed that someone has sat kitty-corner from me. i just glanced at him from the side, and didn’t pay much attention to him till i noticed the book he was reading. i squinted and peered closer — was it? could it be?

bukowski.

from my journal:
“and i want to say to him “hey! think ham on rye is great? read love is a dog from hell or the most beautiful woman in town and i sit here, grinning like an idiot, and i find i can’t say something or anything to him. that my mouther is watering from wanting to say something -anything- and i can’t. i sit here rigid and i find i now can’t even look at him!! shit. i lick my lips because they’ve suddenly gone dry. and i realize that i don’t give two figs about something – i can be as brave as a warrior. but when i do care about something — i ultimately become shy and meek.

“i sat there, heart pounding and feeling like an idiot savant because i couldn’t get the nerve to speak to him. i heard “Montgomery St.” called off and knew this was my stop. i packed my bags and got up — and noticed he got up to. THIS WOULD BE THE TIME TO SAY SOMETHING!

“But i didn’t. I stood behind him and cocked my hips a bit and concentrated on the back of his neck. on the way out of the train, i accidentally stepped on the back of his foot as he turned left and i turned right. once i got above ground, i started scanning the crowds to see if i could see him.

“On the way back to work, i started noticing people left and right. i kept my head straight, my stomach tucked in and my boobs thrust forward. i demanded that everyone look at me and see me for myself. right there. right then.
“I didn’t light a cigarette until I was at the corner of 2nd and Folsom and almost at work. i kept thinking of the poetry in motion of me moving along him — and knowing of course that the whole walk up 2nd street i had completely dissected this relationship with this stranger. i saw every movement between us — every shrill screeching moment from ecstasy to agony. within that 10 minute range from BART station to 2nd/Folsom, i had already put myself through an intense relationship, that lasted 2 years and ended up in tragedy.”

I had just finished, not more than moments ago, Zelda: The Biography and am happy for doing so. Finally, after starting it all those months ago when Justin came into town, I had finally gotten to the bibliography page. I was both disappointed and exalted at the end of the book.

I was disappointed due to the fact that the author would do pages and pages of literary criticism on Zelda’s work, which if I wanted to read, I would have bought such. But no — pages and pages of worthless crap attempting to intone how Zelda’s work mimics her own life. Well duh. A writer who writes about what he doesn’t know is a fool.

So many things in my mind tonight. Freaking figures. An hour ago I was lying in bed, could not sleep for the life of me, and now I am tired and yawning. I must sleep soon for else my next few days are going to be fucked up like a bitch. Thursday is the day from hell with midterms and I teach Interweb 101 that night. I need my beauty sleep. But I keep working strange hours and thus don’t get the sleep. Working is the schtick. I keep playing freaking spades with Shelly and Dave all the damn time. 🙂 Not this is necessarily a bad thing — gives me more time to flirt with Dave. *suggestive*

However, the rant this evening isn’t about spades, my new PHAT pipe to the Interweb (i just got 56k — woo!) or the fact that I’m really obsessing about Henry Rollins right now. Nope, not even about the fact I’m going to bare his love child. Uh nope.

In all honesty, tonights rant is about high school. For many of you (us/them), either you’re in it or just gotten out of it. My little foray into high school ended nearly nine years ago (yes — I’m old. Shoot me.) Now that it seems so far distant — my question is this: WHY AM I STILL LETTING THE STUPID POPULAR PEOPLE IN HIGH SCHOOL RUN MY FREAKING LIFE?

There. Now i feel better.

Let me begin by explaining:
Earlier today, a fine lass named Jessica from a mailing list I’m on, had emailed in about the old saying “high school is the best time of your life” and proceeded to prove to us, in her opinion why it was not. I had followed up with this tasty bite:

My freshman year of high school, I got tested for an IQ test because my MEAP test was really high. They wanted to put me in an high school that _geared_ for placing students into college. They taught Latin, Greek, were socially conscious -- not these see jack run public school classes. I was accepted and refused to go. I wanted to stay with my "friends". Big mistake.
Later on that year, our AP Biology class went to Kentucky to go see Mammoth Caves. One night, I got pulled into a room with the jr varsity swim team. I knew most of these guys -- I was friends with most of them from classes and socially. One of them pushed me down onto the floor and attempted to fuck me in front of his team mates. I pushed him off of me, went screaming into the bathroom, locked myself into the bathroom and started yelling out of the window (the window was only about 1 foot high and 18 inches wide). My cabin mates came and forced the "boys" to open the door and let me out. Not one adult was told.
That Monday, rumours spread around the school (1500+ students) that not only did i fuck him! i gave head to every guy (about nine) in that room. No one said a thing, my parents were never told and I soon forgot about it. However, the impact of that was amazing. I went from being 5'10 and 140lbs to 5'10 and 200+ lbs. During my sophomore year -- most of the time when i did get asked out, it was because of those rumors. Funny that, the most I had ever done until that time was kiss one boy. never even felt a penis until much later on. In my jr year, it was under the advice that I drop out. Actually, I instigated it. I was clinically depressed, had already attempted suicide (and that rumor was spread like crazy). I had gained a lot of weight, was smoking, and had also was on my way of becoming an alcoholic.
When I went back that fall to re-do my jr year, I got taunted and teased by my classmates (and upperclassman, whom would have been my class). I got mocked by people in the middle of the mall (an open area that adjoined the two buildings). Teachers had very little apathy or hell, even empathy for me. By the end of THAT jr year, I had made the decision to go live with my dad in Toronto. When I came back a year later, I got notified that I was short ONE credit from YMI system to graduate. I took my GEDs in November of 1991 and scored in the top 3%. The instructor looked at me incredulously, because:
a. i completed them in 1/3 the time
b. i completed the whole series of tests within 1/2 the time
c. i had scored the highest that he had ever seen.
However, the stigma and shame I still feel 8 years later from having a HUGELY crappy high school experience (include psychopathic mother and her
string of BFs), I won't claim a GED -- but that I graduated from York Memorial Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Ontario.
And ya know what?
Not one person had ever caught me professionally for "lying".
High school sucked the big one.

I had been thinking about this recently and Jessica’s query and a nice little piece in the SF Chronicle about people bitching about TOO MUCH homework got me depressed. and angry. and furious.

Several weeks ago, since I’m still under the impression that these nitwits DO run my life and I am nothing more than a puppet on strings, I got on altavista the other day and searched for the people i went to school with. And you know what? I couldn’t remember /but/ three names! and of those names — I couldn’t find /anything/ about them on the internet. Strange. The internet has been my whole world for the last four years — and by now, if i can’t find something about someone — they must not exist.

strange to think that i had let this whole group, nee’ this fantasy, foible of sorts and nothing.
one day, I’ll write more and rid myself free of these demons.